Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Well it looks like my father's home country is getting double fucked.

after everything else we know about this thing, I'm not surprised that Corrupt Corporate Executives hate cosplay and fanfic dojins

I am very skeptical that this would outlaw wearing character costumes, considering that would pretty much outlaw a big part of the way many Americans celebrate Halloween. That would hurt many American businesses that sell Halloween costumes based on copyrighted characters and cosplay items in general, such as character wigs.

I suppose they could outlaw creating your own costumes, but in cases where people are very good at making professional-looking costumes, it might be hard to tell the difference.

edited 25th Jul '15 4:30:54 PM by Rainbow

Other parts of the law in general seem Fascist, but Inefficient. But I still would sleep better at night knowing that this thing was incinerated with the fury of a million supernovas

edited 25th Jul '15 4:45:04 PM by MorningStar1337

Hopefully you're right, and the TPP doesn't do that. On the other hand, this wouldn't be the first time politicians tried to pass a law to patch some minor copyright issue that would cause far more problems than it would solve. There was one law that wanted to prevent second-hand sales for... something, I think it was trying to get rid of bootleg DVDs or something (don't quote me, I'm not sure), but the wording was vague enough that it would have banned the good old-fashioned garage sale. The bill died, but it's a good example of people not thinking things through.

And again, we don't know for sure because they won't show us the stupid thing.

Not showing us is by far the most suspicious element of the whole thing. There is something in there that someone doesn't want anyone to see. It might be something no one actually cares about, or it could be earth-shattering, but the mere fact that the whole thing is being hidden makes me very uncomfortable with it.

edited 25th Jul '15 5:53:03 PM by Zendervai

Not showing is part of the negotiation process. Again, i look back to the coming agreement with Iran, you can't have lobbyists screaming at legislators to derail the thing at each step of the negotiation process, especially because what gets pitched and what the deal ends up being can transform drastically overnight, so there would be a lot of signal interference if things were made perfectly transparent, because people don't understand how the process works and will generally make the "proposal = finished product" fallacy and freak the hell out over anything negative in there.

Of course, the privilege of secret negotiations is the idea that they *will* lead to a beneficial final product. If that privilege is abused, then it can be taken away.

You're right, I've heard that argument before (though you put it better than "if you knew what was in it, you wouldn't let us sign it"). It's a good point. Unfortunately, we don't trust our leaders enough to let them handle all this behind closed doors. And it's not like the night before the signing, they're going to publish everything and ask what their constituents think.

I understand the need to make trade deals, but major deals like this need more trustworthy leaders in charge. Sorry. If the public doesn't trust you to handle this, you shouldn't handle this. Do smaller, individual deals instead.

Thing is it's not just the negotiations not being shown, even the final product isn't going to be shown from what I understand.

We don't need to have negotiations be entirely secret, and quite frankly, if the negotiators are afraid that the public won't like what's in the text, that should raise a fucking red flag, as far as I'm concerned, as did Senator Warren, who pretty much explicitly made the argument that if something is being argued in the name of the people of the United States isn't reflective of what the people of the US actually want, then as far as she's concerned, that shouldn't be policy of the United States.

And when "special interests", especially multinational companies, have far more access to the text than actual politicians do, something is severely wrong with the negotiating process.

If you want to actually put something in a trade agreement that the people might not like, you should have to actually explain why it's a good thing and why it should be there, like any other policy, otherwise don't do it at all. Non-transparency is horseshit.

Of course from what we know, this is gonna be hard sell anyway, we have SOPA built in, a virtual ability to "recruit" workers via blackmail caused by the above, complete override of all the checks and balances that stop MegaCorps from ruining the environment and making people sick, and the death and ruin of the public domain.

BTW I forgot to mention, but the EFF decided to cut out the middle men and create a site that directly lets people contact their representatives

Speaking of which here's a list of people that voted for Fast Track and here's Yahoo news's take on the secrecy.

edited 26th Jul '15 12:10:59 PM by MorningStar1337

and the TPP is extremely ablest, typical.

I'm also gonna bring up the fact that TPP allows slavery.

Or rather, they don't want to exclude a country who does forced labor because they might wind up trading with the Chinese.

edited 28th Jul '15 12:29:58 PM by Psyga315

You talking about Malaysia? Because I don't really eat the "upgrading human rights to Tier 2" thing.

And of course it allows slavery, under the worse case scenario, it might enable people to use blackmail (which they have access to via the NSA and the fact that fanwork would be illegitimized) to virtually enslave people

On a less paranoid note, a reminder that there are still some sticking points

edited 28th Jul '15 12:43:11 PM by MorningStar1337

We may have hope though.

It's the combination of secrecy and fast track that makes it look suspicious. Remember, even most members of Congress arent being allowed to see this thing ahead of time, then they have a limited period of time to debate it, then they have to vote it up or down without offering any amendments. It just has all the appearance of railroading an agreement they know the public wouldnt support. Which, you know, kind of undermines democracy.

I find it funny that they made this huge fuss over the Confederate flag, yet they are vouching for a deal that is everything the Confederates stood for. Slavery? Check with Malaysia. Racism? Well, they made the deal to ensure the Chinese doesn't have an advantage (effectively making a pseudo-embargo on them) and they were the reasons they even rejected anti-slavery amendments (so that Malaysia doesn't take their business to China), IIRC. And like you said, undiplomatic.

Canada's elections a Spanner in the Works that is greatly appreciated

Wait, I'm a bit confused about the slavery thing. What is slavery in Malaysia like?

From the article:

This is a bit vague. Is the idea that forced labour is legal in Malaysia?

Considering the Nineteen Eighty Four comparisons, that seems sadly appropriate

Talk of banning fan-works is greatly exaggerated, i should say. Even if the legal standards change such that the copyright holder no longer has to protest, you're still not going to get law enforcement to sign on. Much like how rampant piracy and DRM-circumvention is, and yet it is easily accessible and comparatively rarely dealt with.

So I found a relevant article with a bit more detail about trafficking in Malasyia:

edited 28th Jul '15 8:30:30 PM by editerguy

This is true - many migrant workers in Malaysia, legal or illegal, are treated extremely poorly by their employers. Many a foreign worker has revealed to some journalist or another that the worker's documents have been confisticated by the worker's employers. Some businesses hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor go so far as to tip off the police to their presence once their services are no longer needed to get out of having to pay them.

Unfortunately, migrant workers are still considered to be cheaper to hire for these reasons, so they have to deal with prejudice due to a societal assumption that "they took our jobs", in addition to being stereotyped as criminals or part of a voter fraud scheme.

Oh okay, thanks, I didn't know that. So migrant forced labour is effectively allowed in Malaysia? Unfortunately, employers confiscating workers' documents also happens in developed countries like Australia and the US, but it is illegal and (at least in Australia) most people don't seem to even know about it.

Well anyway, previously my main problem with the TPP was the idea that corporations can sue nations, but if it's weak on anti-slavery measures that is just as bad.

Effectively in the sense that the political will to stamp out discrimination against migrant labor is completely nonexistent. It's only slightly better on the societal front.

Opposition to the TPPA here mainly has to do with the IP laws on medication effectively eliminating access to generic drugs. Yes, people actually take the human trafficking "upgrade" seriously here.